Chapter 75. Increasing Singularities

“The money has been transferred.”

Hazaad looked at the man in front of him after listening to his secretary’s report. Although it took some time since the transaction was done through a paper company, the complicated stuff was taken care of by his employees anyway.

“Please check and let us finish the business.”

“Haha, please wait a minute.”

The man in front, Golgers the ‘Goldbug’, the guildmaster of Gold Rush, was able to check the transfer through the system synchronized with the game.

“300 thousand US dollars, transfer confirmed.”

After checking the money, Golgers immediately requested a 1 to 1 trade, and gave his opponent 4 million gold.

This transaction was worth 300 thousand dollars, so Golgers had come himself to make the deal.

Although the Sky-Gold war had taken a considerable toll on Gold Rush, it hadn’t completely collapsed. Golgers had brought out his business abilities and managed to put Gold Rush back at the top again.

With the large-scale transaction with Hazaad this time, Gold Rush was able to gain even more stability.

“Please contact me again once you need anything.”

Hazaad was a very important customer to Golgers. Of course, this didn’t mean that he gave him a discount or bonus gold. In fact, since this was a large-scale trade, he even sold his gold at a higher price than market price.

However, he did try to get Hazaad everything he wanted.

300 thousand gold wasn’t anything much to Hazaad anyway. He was the typical ‘oil-rich’ guy. Even though shale gas technology was developed and the oil was no longer sold for as much as money as before, a middle-east oil-money man wouldn’t have any problems with 300 thousand gold.

In fact, Hazaad had already spent close to 1 million US dollars in cash. And he was rather frustrated that no one was selling him gold in large amounts even though he had the money.

As such, Golgers was an important man to him as well.

“I’ll contact you later.”

Hazaad immediately went to Tune after the trade with Golgers. The reason he bought that much gold from Golgers was because of one quest.

Large-scale chain quest ‘The Great Merchant Guild’, the 44th quest, ‘Merchant Guild creation’.

Hazaad used all of his abilities to scrape gold in order to do this quest, and was able to fulfill the required 8 million gold in 4 days.

Hazaad completed the quest without hesitation.

You have created a merchant guild. The merchant guild’s name can be set in management mode. All other functionalities of the merchant guild can be accessed through the management window as well.

Congratulations. You have become an ‘executive’ by creating a merchant guild.

You have acquired the rare-grade title ‘executive’.

“Ahahaha, finally!”

Hazaad laughed loudly in joy. The money and time he invested into creating this merchant guild was quite considerable. Even though his only hobby was gaming, this was the first game that made him spend nearly 1 million dollars.

This meant that he was that absorbed into it, and he was slowly coming to a point where he thought that his current methods wouldn’t work forever.

“Ilmaz. Everyone’s here right?”

Hazaad asked Ilmaz, his secretary, and right arm both in the real world and in the game.

“Yes. They’re in the conference room.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

Listening to Ilmaz’s report, Hazaad logged out of EL and went to his D-room. As he had access to all sorts of paid contents of the Dreamnet, his D-room conference room was very large as well.

And there were many ‘rich’ EL users that he had personal contact with, waiting for him. They were all related to OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries).

After finding out that many of his contacts were enjoying EL, he started to draw one big picture, which was the ‘rich user’ association.

Of course, it wouldn’t be easy to drag them into an association, since they all lacked nothing, but it wasn’t impossible either.

‘Once we create our own cartel inside EL…… we’ll possess powers no one can match.’

Hazaad didn’t like the fact that there were users above him no matter how much money he invested. And also found out that many others were thinking just like him. This was how he put his plan to play.

‘In the end, the greatest power that moves the world is money.’

Hazaad was planning to take tyranny in the game through the power of money. This attempt had happened in Sanghyuk’s previous life as well. Though…… it happened at a different time.

Originally, Hazaad would attempt to create an all-powerful organization in 3 years.

And perhaps because it was too late, his attempts back then weren’t all that effective. At the time, Hazaad’s rich ‘friends’ all had set up their own smaller factions so the association wasn’t fully unified.

Despite that, the ‘Black Market’ he made grew up to be an incredible force.

However, this time, he had decided to create his group very early on. This was also an effect that Sanghyuk had to reality…… and one sure fact was that they would become a much more formidable force than they were in Sanghyuk’s previous life.

‘Black Market! I will monopolize all wealth in the world of EL!’

Hazaad had confidence. He believed that everything would go well if he managed to persuade the 17 users in his D-room into creating the organization.

***

“From now onwards, we are all in one boat.”

Red Sun, guildmaster of the Red Line guild, smiled and extended his hand towards Kun.

Kun accepted the handshake with a smile on his face as well. Having given up the pure-blood customs of his guild, he even went as far as to create a ‘Line Alliance’.

It wasn’t any ordinary Line Alliance, but an alliance between ‘Red’ and ‘Illusion’ two of the 5 big lines of EL.

(T/N: Guilds: official EL system, Guild Lines: groups of guilds, Line Alliance: alliance between guild lines.)

Even though Line Red shook a little bit after their strongest guild, the Rose Knights, had left, and ‘Illusion’ became weaker with some people leaving in disagreement of the abandoning of the pure-blood customs, these two were still top-notch guilds.

Despite their losses, Line Red and Line Illusion’s main forces were still there. The two lines merged into an alliance of Line Twilight, and Twilight naturally became the largest faction in EL.

This alliance between the two was unpredicted by anyone, including Sanghyuk. This was natural, since these kind of alliances didn’t even exist in his previous life.

This was also an effect he had on the future.

The Black Market was created three years early, and a colossal alliance had been formed as well. These were all singularities that Sanghyuk couldn’t have predicted.

Although he didn’t expect this to happen precisely, he did know that his return to the past would have triggered many changes.

He had prepared many things to counter these as well.

Many singularities had popped up, including the time acceleration by Chaos. But not all of these had negative impacts on him.

“Reah, are you really going to refuse Black’s offer?”

Chris, the agent for Reah Colin, and closest friend, looked at Reah in a serious expression.

“…….”

Reah spoke very little. So, Chris was able to tell what she was thinking just from her expression.

“So you aren’t. But even for you, I’m pretty sure Black’s tolerance has ran out. He’ll probably tell you to return the belt. Although he wouldn’t be able to publicly announce this due to your popularity, he’ll do what he’s best at, playing with the media, and damage your reputation as much as possible and then taking away your belt…… if that really fine with you?”

“…… I don’t care.”

Reah stopped shadow boxing and nodded her head slowly. It had been over a year since she stopped going on the octagon, but she was still training herself.

To her, training was separate from the octagon. Endlessly training herself and overcoming her limits was the thing she liked the most.

“Why? Why are you doing this? Are you really serious about what you said before?”

“My heart no longer thumps hard on the octagon.”

“Haa, you really…….”

Chris muttered while shaking her head. It had been 15 years since she got to know Reah, but she had never changed since 15 years ago. (T/N: Chris seems to be a girl.)

Reah was always adamant on doing something that made her heart thump from since she was young.

From the time she became a female straw-league champion on the SFC (Super Fighting Championship) at a young age of 20, to becoming a bantam-tier champion just a year later, was all thanks to the fact that her heart was thumping.

Not only that, she practically became a general female champion at the age of 22, and had a record of 21 rounds, 21 victories, zero losses, and 21 K.Os in the 7 years since her debut, was all thanks to her ‘heart thumping’.

Although her crowning of the ‘greatest beauty in the world’, ditching all hollywood actresses in the dust, was because of something different, she was still the greatest star in SFC history.

Even the stars of the male section paled in front of her.

Going beyond that, she was one of the top 5 popular person across the whole world.

However, she was refusing to go on stage since last year, without much reason. Black’s persuasions didn’t work at all. Now that her heart had cooled, even Chris, her best friend, would not be able to persuade her otherwise.

‘Well, she was reaching her limits since the year before last.’

Chris knew Reah too well, and already noticed that Reah had practically lost interest in the octagon since two years ago.

She had done 2 rounds to defend her championship against all leagues, and one of them ended in a 20-second K.O in the first round, while the other ended in a 31-second K.O in the first round. This especially fueled her to leave the octagon.

She was unmatched by anyone, and this fact made her heart cool down.

“So what are you going to do now? End it all here?”

“I’m sorry, but tell Black for me. I’ll return the belt, and as for the reason…. let’s go with injury.”

“Haa, I wonder if the fans will really accept this. For now, I’ll look for a way to solve this as smoothly as possible.”

Christ felt that Reah had already come to a decision.

“Thanks.”

Actually, Reah was a rather extremist person. Once she was into something, she saw nothing else other than it. And precisely because this was the case, Chris was a very precious friend to her.

It could be said that Reah became ‘humane’ because of Chris.

“Actually, I came up with a scenario a few months ago, since I saw this coming. So don’t worry about it too much. Also…… you don’t have to take me into consideration, so do whatever you want. You don’t need hold back from what you want to do and train in front of me.”

Chris already knew that Reah was into something else. She just didn’t mention what it was.

“……You knew?”

“Sure. Did you forget that I can read everything from your eyes?”

“I guess…… but I’m not training to be considerate of you. It just became a habit of mine.”

“I’m telling you not to log out of DN hurriedly, just because I’ve arrived. If you found what made your heart flutter in there, then just go for it like the person you are! That’s the Reah Colin I know.”

Chris made a bright smile towards Reah.

Seeing her smile, Reah felt a lump disappearing from her chest.

“Thanks.”

Reah once again realized how precious Chris was to her. Reah also smiled with her.

Her smile was angelic.

Reah Colin’s change. This was yet another singularity. However, this singularity had a slightly different meaning to Sanghyuk.